Data Backup Solutions Placerville

A quick guide to data backup solutions in Placerville

The basic principles of data backups have remained much the same for many years. The practices of data backups have however changed significantly from the early days of IT, most obviously with the arrival of the cloud. As a result, it can be increasingly challenging for SMBs to decide which data backup solution is right for them. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to data backup solutions in Placerville.

Things To Be Followed While Data Backup

1. You should probably still apply the 3-2-1 strategy

Generally, you want three copies of your data over two devices with one copy being kept off-site. These days, devices can be read to mean clouds, and off-site can be read to mean in an alternative cloud, but this is still the strategy most SMBs should follow. If you go for fewer backups then you are at increased risk of losing your data. If, however, you go for more, then you increase your exposure to data-security threats without any significant increase in benefit.

2. Even if you’re running a data center you should probably back up to a cloud

As the old saying goes “start with the end in mind”. The end goal of data backups is to be able to restore them if the need arises. The effectiveness of data backups is usually measured in terms of how well they assist you to recover from an event. Your recovery point objective measures how much data you could potentially lose (essentially the maximum gap between data backups) and your recovery time objective measures how long it will take you to get back in full production after an event.

Ideally, you want both of these to be as short as possible. In practice, of course, you’re going to have to work out the sweet spot between benefit (speed) and cost. This means that, in a data center environment, there may be an argument for taking one data backup to a physical device that is stored locally and another data backup to a cloud, as your off-site backup. If, however, you’re already in a cloud environment, then you almost always want to back up to a second cloud.

3. Managing the data backup process

Similarly, it is extremely rare for there to be a case for using hardware-based data backup solutions. Really these only make sense if you are running a data center and backing up to physical storage. For the most part, you will probably be looking either at a software-based data backup solution or a cloud-based data backup solution, more commonly known as Backup-as-a-Service. There are also data backup solutions that can be used either as standalone software or as part of a cloud. These are known as hybrid data backup solutions.

Using standalone software can give you a high degree of control and flexibility. This can be useful if, for example, you want to implement a tiered recovery system giving priority to your most critical systems and vice versa. It can also be handy if you aim to keep costs as low as possible as it will allow you to look for the most economical storage deals. BaaS, by contrast, may be less flexible and a bit more expensive, but it can also be very convenient.

4. Choosing your storage option

At the risk of sounding repetitive, outside of the data center environment, backing up to a physical device is now widely seen as being more hassle than it’s worth (and even in a data center environment it has its limitations). This basically means that your choice boils down to a public cloud or a private cloud and then the most appropriate form of storage.

If you’re already in the public cloud then your first decision is essentially taken for you. You only have to decide which public cloud and what specific form of cloud storage. You might also want to consider what else you need to do to turn your data backup process into a complete cloud disaster recovery solution. This basically means working out what your staff needs to make use of the data and ensuring that it is available in your second public cloud.

If you’re in the private cloud, then you basically have two options. Option one is to use a public cloud for data backup and link it both to your main private cloud and your disaster recovery solution (presumably a second private cloud). It would need import/export access to both to keep all data in sync. You’d then encrypt the data on your own servers and keep it encrypted until it returned to your servers (or was deleted).

Option two is to use a second private cloud as both a place to hold your data backups and as a disaster recovery solution.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced data backup solutions provider in Placerville, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.

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